The Rise and Fall of NauvooRoberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
History
The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saints -- Illinois -- Nauvoo; Nauvoo (Ill.) -- History
SIR,--Your reply to my letter of last November, concerning your
rule of action towards the Latter-day Saints, if elected president,
is at hand; and that you and your friends of the same opinion
relative to the matter in question may not be disappointed as to
me or my mind upon so grave a subject, permit me, as a law-abiding
man, as a well-wisher to the perpetuity of constitutional rights
and liberty, and as a friend to the free worship of Almighty God by
all, according to the dictates of every person's own conscience, to
say _I am surprised_ that a man or men in the highest stations of
public life should have made up such a fragile "view" of a case,
than which there is not one on the face of the globe fraught with
so much consequence to the happiness of men in this world or the
world to come.
To be sure, the first paragraph of your letter appears very
complacent and fair on a white sheet of paper. And who, that is
ambitious for greatness and power, would not have said the same
thing? Your oath would bind you to support the Constitution and
laws; and as all creeds and religions are alike tolerated, they
must, of course, all be justified or condemned according to merit
or demerit. But why--tell me why are all the principal men held up
for public stations _so cautiously careful_ not to publish to the
world that they _will judge a righteous judgment_, law or no law?
for laws and opinions, like the vanes of steeples, change with the
wind.
One Congress passes a law, another repeals it; and one statesman
says that the Constitution means this, and another that; and who
does not know that all may be wrong? The opinion and pledge,
therefore, in the first paragraph of your reply to my question,
like the forced steam from the engine of a steam-boat, makes the
show of a bright cloud at first; but when it comes in contact with
a purer atmosphere, dissolves to common air again.
Your second paragraph leaves you naked before yourself, like a
likeness in a mirror, when you say that, "according to your view,
the federal government is one of limited and specific powers," and
has no jurisdiction in the case of the Mormons. So then a State can
at any time expel any portion of her citizens with impunity, and,
in the language of Mr. Van Buren, frosted over with your gracious
"_views of the case_," though the cause is ever so just, Government
can do nothing for them, because it has no power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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